Your digital footprint: what can the internet reveal about you?
A profile name, an old listing, a reused username and a holiday photo. Small details on their own; together, a guide to approaching you more convincingly. Review your public information and decide what should stay online.
A scammer does not need your password to know a lot about you
Information often comes from places where you left it yourself: public profiles, comments, listings or old accounts. Problems often arise when those details can be connected.
What you publish
Photos, captions, reviews, your employer, a phone number in a listing or a public email address.
What can be connected
A reused username and profile photo can connect profiles you intended to keep separate.
How it can be misused
A message can use your correct name and details about your work or interests to feel personal. Even accurate information does not verify the sender.
Five small clues can create a convincing story
Jane lists her employer on a professional profile, mentions her dog Rex on a public social account, reuses a username on a forum and left her phone number in an old listing. Each detail came from a different situation.
“Hello Jane, we are looking into the security of your work account…”
Personal details can lower your guard. Independently verify requests to sign in, share a code or install an app using a contact you already know.
What can you find about yourself in 15 minutes?
Search only for your own details and record links to the pages you find. Start signed out or in a private window to approximate what a visitor without an account can see. Results may vary by search engine, country and time.
1. Name and usernames
Search your full name in quotation marks, then add your town or employer. Try old nicknames and usernames you reuse.
"Jane Example" LondonThe same username on a marketplace, forum and social network can connect otherwise separate profiles.
2. Email and phone number
Search your own email address in quotation marks. Try your phone number with and without its country code and with spaces. Look for old listings, directories and public documents.
"my.address@example.com"Not finding a detail in a search engine does not mean it is nowhere online.
3. Public profiles
Open your own social profiles while signed out and check tags added by others. Can people see your phone number, email, home, family, regular route or holiday updates in real time?
4. Old accounts and listings
Review marketplaces, forums, discussions, gaming accounts, reviews and your old websites. Searching your inbox for “registration”, “welcome” or “confirm your account” may help. Check information that remained public after a listing was deleted.
5. Your photos
Try a reverse image search using a frequently used profile photo, for example through Google Lens or TinEye. This can reveal whether the same image connects your profiles. Uploading a photo to an external service shares that file with the service; do not upload sensitive photos.
6. Data breaches and metadata
You can check your email address with Have I Been Pwned. A match means it appears in a recorded breach, not that your current account is necessarily compromised. Before publishing photos, check them with the DPP Metadata Cleaner (Czech). It works locally in your browser and creates a cleaned copy in a supported format.
Want to keep your findings together?
The DPP Digital Footprint Audit prepares searches for several of your usernames and contact details. You mark which details actually appear together on the pages you check. Searches open only when you click.
Look for connections, not just individual details.
Ask three questions about each finding: Who can see it? How could they use it? Can I limit its visibility?
- Does a profile publicly display your contact email or phone number?
- Do you reuse the same photo and username in different places?
- Do photos reveal your home, workplace or regular locations?
- Are old listings, comments or documents still public?
- Does a profile reveal family connections or that you are currently away?
- Do original files contain location data or other metadata?
How much of your footprint is public?
Answer eight indicative questions for suggested first steps. This is neither a security rating nor a search for your personal information.
Reduce your footprint without leaving the internet
Start with contact details and links between accounts. Decide whether each detail needs to be public or only visible to selected people.
Separate email addresses by purpose
You do not need exactly three inboxes. Separating important accounts from everyday registrations can keep a publicly known address from also revealing the sign-in address for your most sensitive services.
Banking, government services, your password manager and recovery of important accounts. Keep it off public profiles and listings.
Regular communication and services where you need ongoing access to the inbox.
A separate masked address for a newsletter or individual service. It forwards messages to your real inbox and can later be disabled.
An alias is not a disposable inbox. Accounts you may need to recover require an address you can access long term. A disposable address can prevent account recovery. One example of an alias service is Firefox Relay; check its current terms and whether important messages can be received before using it.
Usernames and contact details
If you do not need to connect personal and professional activities, avoid using the same username everywhere. Share your phone number only where needed and remove old contact details.
Profiles and old accounts
Review profile visibility, contact lists, photo tagging and old listings. Delete unused accounts or remove unnecessary information.
Photos and places
Check what a photo actually shows: an address, document, number plate or place you regularly visit. Removing EXIF data does not hide these visible details.
Work from the source to search results
First address the place where the information is actually published. Removing a search result does not necessarily delete the original page.
1. Save the link
Record the page address, the published detail and when you found it. If it involves fraud, threats or blackmail, preserve evidence before requesting removal.
2. Remove your own content
Edit a profile, listing or post, change its visibility or close an account you no longer need. Check tags on other people’s posts too.
3. Contact the operator of another website
If you do not control the content, contact the operator with the exact URL and detail. A removal form may be available; the outcome depends on the circumstances.
4. Address visibility in search engines
For some personal information, Google offers Results about you and requests to remove search results. Availability and approval vary. A removed result does not mean the content has been removed from the original website.
What your own review can and cannot tell you
If Google finds nothing, am I “invisible”?
No. A search engine may not know every public post, content behind sign-in or records in service databases. Results provide only a partial view.
Does knowing my email address let someone access my account?
No. The address alone does not grant access. But it enables more targeted messages and sign-in attempts. Use a unique password and multi-factor authentication for every account.
What does a match on Have I Been Pwned mean?
The address appeared in a recorded breach. Check which services are involved. If you reused the affected password elsewhere, change it there too. No match does not prove that no breach exists.
Is removing photo metadata enough?
No. Metadata may contain dates, device information or location, but the image itself may show documents, a child’s face, an address or a number plate. Check both the content and the file.
Will the Digital Footprint Audit find everything automatically?
No. It prepares queries for your own information, opens search links only when you click and helps compare pages you check yourself. A matching username does not prove the profile is yours; no result does not prove the information is absent everywhere.
Should I delete all social media for privacy?
You do not have to. Choose what to share publicly, what to share only with people you know and what does not need to be published at all.
Find one detail and decide whether it should stay public
Start with an old profile or publicly listed contact. Use the DPP Digital Footprint Audit to prepare searches for your own details and record what you actually find. Before sharing another photo, check its content and metadata.
Sources and suggested services
Links lead to official services and help pages. External services have their own data-processing terms; use only your own information for checks.